Stop the Zionist massacre in Gaza Strip

Stop the Zionist massacre in Gaza Strip 

The international working class is called upon to intervene by its methods 

Israel's response to the offensive launched by Hamas on Saturday 10/7 on its territory was not long in coming. The Zionists systematically bombarded the Gaza Strip, even using banned weapons such as white phosphorus, in order to apply a "collective punishment" to all Palestinians for daring to defy the occupier. They use a racist discourse, degrading the Palestinians to the status of "human beasts", in order to justify the siege that has left more than 2 million people without food, water and electricity. To complete their murderous task, the Israeli agents of imperialism are preparing at this moment (10/15) to invade the northern half of the strip with all their state-of-the-art war machinery. 

In the face of this, on Friday, October 13, European capitals, US cities and several Arab and Muslim countries saw their streets flooded with demonstrations in support of the heroic Palestinian resistance. In many of these countries, the demonstrations were banned or repressed, as in Rome, Berlin and Paris. The imperialist governments fear the reaction of the masses in the face of the crudest evidence of the decomposition of their social system based on the exploitation of our class and the plundering of colonies and semi-colonies: the existence of Israel on the expulsion of the Palestinians from their historic territory 75 years ago. 

 An explosive situation  

The current confrontation on Palestinian land is not a bolt from the blue. Israel has been accelerating its policy of territorial conquest over the Palestinian territories, at least since the time of the Trump administration. This has led to various clashes in Jerusalem and the West Bank, on which the Zionists and their settlers (parastatal land occupation movement) have been advancing. The raid on the Jenin refugee camp last July was the previous episode of these clashes. 

The Netanyahu government must respond to a fragile situation due to the crisis that neighboring Arab states, such as Syria and Lebanon, have entered due to the effects of the pandemic and the world economic crisis. The utopian two-state solution has been buried by reality, and Israel is seeking to move forward in "normalization of relations" agreements with various governments in the region. In 2020, under Trump's auspices, Abraham agreements were signed in this sense with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and Morocco also recognized the Israeli enclave in its pretended statehood. 

But the world crisis is now entering a more acute phase with the deepening of warlike tendencies. The war between Russia and Ukraine is straining Israel, provider of weapons and supplies to both contenders. Israel is now the main focus of US war aid, which has led Zelensky to protest so that his imperialist godfathers do not leave him behind in the military efforts. Israel will probably give priority to arming its own army. Thus new contradictions are generated in the relationship between Ukraine and NATO, further bogging down the reactionary solution that both Russia, on the one hand, and imperialism on the other, intend to give to the former workers' states through their assimilation. 

The enemy is not invincible  

The truth is that the Palestinian offensive, desperate by the way and with methods that we do not share, is explained by the cornering to which Israel intended to lead the resistance. The attempt to sign an understanding with the Saudi kingdom has been put on hold in the face of Zionist brutality. The pro-Israel imperialist front appears to be more solid than ever, but at the same time mobilizations are developing, made up of huge contingents of Arab and Muslim immigrants, in the very heart of the metropolis.  

Also the government of the occupation shows a false image of "national unity", while thousands of its "citizens" flee to their countries of origin when they see that the occupation does not guarantee them security in the "promised land". The enlarged coalition government, which has been joined by the opposition that had been denouncing Netanyahu's institutional reforms, cannot be called a government of national unity, because Israel is not a state, but a military occupation with a population implanted on the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. 

Of course, the struggle is totally unequal if we restrict it to the borders of historic Palestine; a heroic and vital struggle, but with few perspectives. We Trotskyists place the fight on another plane, where the contingents of the international proletariat can put in the balance all the weight of the class capable of liberating all the forces of humanity’s social production from the bonds to which the bourgeois relations of property and the putrefaction of imperialism subject them.  

Supporting the Palestinian resistance, an internationalist task  

We must be clear that we are not facing a confrontation "of centuries" between two peoples (Zionism began to colonize Palestine at the beginning of the 20th century and Israel was created in 1948), but a struggle between an oppressed nation and the establishment of an imperialist enclave in the heart of the Middle East to control its strategic interests and oil. Zionism is a reactionary ideology and movement, which postulated a way out for the Jewish people, persecuted for centuries, based on the colonization of a territory inhabited by another people and to defend the interests of imperialism. For this reason, we say that Israel is not even a bourgeois state properly speaking, but a monstrosity created by imperialism at the moment of its greatest decomposition. 

The revolutionaries and the vanguard of the working class must intervene in this conflict on the side of the Palestinians, with actions that affect imperialism and its military machinery in production, like the stoppage in the imperialist industries and the blockade of transports, taking the example of the dockers of California, Durban and Livorno that in 2021 stopped shipments with military supplies destined for Israel. We must support all the mobilizations for the end of the Israeli attacks, for the end of the blockade and for the immediate withdrawal of the Zionist army from the Gaza Strip, the right of return of the refugees and displaced persons and the freedom of all the Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli jails.  

The workers of the countries of the region, in the first place, their central battalions of the oil branch, hold the key to advance in the expulsion of imperialism from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya and, of course, Palestine, fighting against the Arab bourgeois governments, partners of imperialism. It is fundamental to take the street actions taking place in Europe and the U.S. to the heart of production. The international struggle in support of the liberation of Palestine will allow collaborating with the emergence of a workers and revolutionary leadership in the Middle East, the only way to unseat the reactionary Islamic or Arab nationalist leaderships like Hamas or Fatah that lead the Palestinian struggle to a dead end. 

10/15/2023